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Tuesday, 2 July 2013

10 Facts That Prove Wine Experts Are Completely Clueless!

1.

In this study, carried
out over four years between 2006-2009, expert judges were given the same wine
three times. In 90% of cases, judges assumed they were drinking different wines,
and gave each sample different marks out of 100, sometimes just minutes after
tasting the last one.

Study two, carried out in
2001: Experts were given the same wine, but with different labels. The language
they used to describe each one varied, depending on whether the label signalled
expensive or cheap. They described the supposedly posh wines as “complex” and
“balanced”, while deploying words such as “weak” and “flat” for the wines
presented as plonk.

A study of 6,000 blind tastings by Robin Goldstein in the Journal of Wine
Economics concluded thus: “For individuals with wine training, we find
indications of a positive relationship between price and enjoyment.” Indeed,
this seems to be hardwired. In this brain-scan study
conducted by CalTech, Stanford suggests that the firing of neurons in the brain
is affected by how much the subject thinks the wine he/she is being served
cost.

Fifty-four experts tested two glasses of wine — one red, one white. They
described the red as “jammy” and full of red fruit, not realising that both
wines were from the same bottle. The only difference was that one had been
coloured red with a flavourless dye.

This study,
carried out by Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, found that when a powerful
piece of music such as O Fortuna from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana
is played, a wine such as Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon is perceived as being
60% richer and more robust than when no music is heard.

In this blind
tasting conducted in 2012, French wines priced up to $650/bottle were put up
against dirt-cheap New Jersey wines. The French wines won, but by such a tiny
margin that, when analysing the results, Princeton professor Richard Quandt
found the expensive and cheap wines to be “statistically undistinguishable” from
each other.

Rudy Kurniawan sold cheap Napa Valley wine, but slapped on photocopied labels
from fine wines, such as 1962 Domaine Ponsot Clos de la Roche. He fooled expert
buyers, critics, and auctioneers, making huge profits — until he was finally
caught and jailed.

Milanese restaurant Osteria L’Intrepido won Wine Spectator magazine’s
prestigious Award of Excellence in August 2008 — the only problem being that the
establishment didn’t exist. It was all a ruse dreamt up by Robin Goldstein to
prove that Wine Spectator would dole out the award to anyone willing to
pay the $250 fee.